Utopian Dreams by Tobias Jones

Author:Tobias Jones [Tobias Jones]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: utopian_dreams_in_search_of_a_good_life
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2012-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

Ruth is a strong-minded, retired teacher of literature. She’s got swimming-pool eyes. We talk about literature for an hour and (as usually happens) I realise how little I studied at university. We get on well. She begins to tell me what it’s really like being eighty. ‘The sadness,’ she says, ‘is that one does learn new things but no longer has the occasion to apply them.’ She tells me how she learnt how to be a better mother only when she was no longer bringing up children. I’m sitting with Benny asleep like a koala on my thigh. Ruth quotes Eliot. She asks me which of the Four Quartets it comes from. I guess and this time she nods: “‘The only wisdom we can hope to acquire is humility,”’ she quotes. ‘Eliot spoke about the fear we all have of belonging to another, or to others, or to God … and that if you don’t overcome that fear your life will be nothing more than a “receipt for deceit”.’

The atmosphere at Hartrigg is one of gentility. There is, says Dudley, ‘a sense of the worth of each person’. ‘We cherish each other’s spiritual journeys,’ says Howard. Ted, a spry, jokey Geordie, puts it like this: ‘There’s a certain austerity in Quaker values. We ignore what isn’t essential. Anything that appears superfluous can be cast off until all that’s left is honesty and integrity.’ And in fact, as you meet people, you realise the extraordinary social commitment expected of Quakers. Rosswitha goes regularly to Chechnya as a volunteer: ‘I’m training people to work with trauma, it’s about how people can begin to listen again. I’m guarded twenty-four hours a day, but it’s an interesting question of whether a Quaker is prepared to be guarded by an armed guard. I said to him, “Please do not defend me with that. Do not fire it on my behalf.” That’s one thing about ageing. Your life is complete in some sort of way and you don’t mind if you lose it. This is the time in life when you can truly take risks.’ Unlike most people of their generation, their memories of the Second World War don’t regard battles and bombings, but peaceful missions: many were in the Friends Ambulance Unit, others went to Austria to work in refugee camps after the armistice. Almost everyone I speak to seems to have dedicated their life to voluntary work. One woman, a former teacher, spent years in peace negotiations in Northern Ireland; another couple ran a Toc-H house in Birmingham.

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